Soft Bigotry

John Rosenberg comments at Discriminations on a report by Chronicle of Higher Education detailing millions of dollars of federal grant money given to minority educational institutions. See excerpt:

September 22, 2009

The Soft Bigotry Of Low Expectations?

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning that the Department of Education “has made little progress in monitoring,” i.e., knows little or nothing about, “what happens to the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants given to minority-serving institutions and colleges that enroll a large proportion of low-income students.”

A Government Accountability Office report issued Monday urged more-comprehensive oversight of how grant money is used, a recommendation the office had previously made in separate reports in 2004 and 2007. The programs the accountability office had suggested have not yet been put in place….

In the 2008 fiscal year, the federal government gave out $667-million in grants to institutions eligible for money under Titles III and V of the Higher Education Act. Those institutions include historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribal colleges and universities, institutions serving Alaskan natives and native Hawaiians, and those enrolling a high proportion of low-income students.

I would surprised if the DOE’s monitoring of non-minority institutions were as lax or non-existent as this. It’s as though the government believes holding minority institutions to the same standards as all others would be, well, discriminatory.